Contextual Statement:

We hope to change the users’ thought patterns to make for healthier thinking and management of stress. We want to show that stress is a tangible thing that you can see and change. We did this by creating a window into the user’s minds.

This project is a mix between interactive art and psychology all tied together in technology. In our display, we want to show people mindfulness without showing them mindfulness. We want them to discover it by interacting with our piece. We creatively brought art and psychology together to solve a very big issue in today’s society. 

“Mindfulness is a skill that allows us to be less reactive to what is happening in the moment. It is a way of relating to all experience—positive, negative and neutral—such that our overall suffering is reduced and our sense of well-being increases. To be mindful is to wake up, to recognize what is happening in the present moment. We are rarely mindful. We are usually caught up in distracting thoughts or in opinions about what is happening in the moment. This is mindlessness.” - (Germer, 2004)

I drew my ideas from different areas and stuck them together. I have some knowledge in neuroscience and psychology; so, I contributed that to the group, I also have experience in circuitry and microcontrollers, and an understanding of design and user interaction. This allowed me to be more creative by drawing my ideas from multiple fields. I did look at a lot of other interactive art displays such as Waterlight Graffiti, art galleries and on the website Pinterest (Interactive Exhibition, 2017). However, all of the other interactive projects I could find were about either directly affecting the viewers’ mental state or the user directly affecting the work. I did not find any showing the users mental state and then changing it, I know something similar exists, however, I have not found it.

Simmons (2014) book Interactive Art Therapy, showed multiple interesting interactive exercises made for psychology. This was interesting to see how they can use similar things to help patients. By reading through these different exercises it helped give me an insight into how real psychologists could use our display. “Interactive art differs from static art such as paintings because interactive art entails reciprocal response or influence between artwork and audience” - (Seevinck, 2017). Overall, from an artistic side and also a psychological side, our project shows a glimpse into the mind of the user and has the potential to change a user’s view about stress.

Conceptual Statement:

Our Brief: “Create an Immersive translation of an individual’s state of mind as an introspective experience” Which summaries to taking someone’s thoughts and emotions and making them into a physical experience, we went with stress in the final iteration. Our main idea is that by making the users’ thoughts a physical tangible thing, they can be just that. By making the stress into a storm that you can control, it indirectly shows how you can control stress in the same way.

We hope to help reduce stress in this stress-fueled world by a metaphor. We have a storm behind a window that reacts to your stress and you can put all your worries into it. By calming the storm, you are calming yourself and the window is like a window into your own mind. We want the user to realize they can separate themselves from the storm that is their stress and see stress as a tangible thing and hopefully, therefore, be able to reduce or manage it better. We want the user to type their worries into the tablet on the desk and watch them appear on the screen and then put their finger on the scanner and try to calm the storm. Thus, changing their view on stress and worries.

The final iteration of this project embodies the concept and brief by incorporating many elements. By using a real window that we are projecting onto rather than a screen with a window and a desk with photos and plants, we are adding to the realism factor making it more believable. We are using heart rate and an input terminal to get an idea of the users’ state of mind and then translating that into the physical real world that is how the projected storm reacts. The storm changes in intensity by getting louder and the rain getting faster, as well as, the addition of thunder.

The brief changed throughout the course of this project as we refined and generated new ideas. The final iteration of this project is nothing like I could have imagined at the beginning. This I think shows that the creative process has been active. To help the creative process we started the project not knowing each other apart from areas of interest. This means we could easily make creative ideas off each other and we all had a different angle to go from and different knowledge to draw off. This helped us think outside the box to best solve the problem and focus on how to make the project a reality. This lead to Storm, the final iteration of our project.

Related Blog Posts Index:

1. Forming a Team for Our Next Project.  - http://blog.epsilum.co.nz/post/164504325489
   
2. What is Movement/Motion? - http://blog.epsilum.co.nz/post/165419136404
   
3. Making a Rough Schedule and Playing with EEG - http://blog.epsilum.co.nz/post/165424187894
   
4. Emotion Idea - http://blog.epsilum.co.nz/post/165424617874
   
5. Storm - http://blog.epsilum.co.nz/post/165428915634
   
6. Brain Science! (Part 1) - http://blog.epsilum.co.nz/post/165707134634
   
7. Progress on The Storm - http://blog.epsilum.co.nz/post/165753821939
   
8. Where Storm Ended Up and My Thoughts - http://blog.epsilum.co.nz/post/167151837779
   

References:

Baer, R. (2010). Assessing Mindfulness and Acceptance Processes in Clients. New Harbinger Publications.
Germer, C. (2004). What is Mindfulness? INSIGHT JOURNAL, 24-29.
Interactive Exhibition. (2017). Retrieved from Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.nz/explore/interactive-exhibition
Seevinck, J. (2017). Emergence in Interactive Art. Springer.
Simmons, L. L. (2014). Interactive Art Therapy: “No Talent Required” Projects. Routledge.